distutils as an application installer?

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:32:15 -0300, PurpleServerMonkey  
<PurpleServerMonkey at gmail.com> escribió:

> Was hoping someone could take a quick look at my distutils problem and
> give it a quick sanity check.
>
> Basically I have a server application (for Linux) that I want to
> install to /usr/local/<server directory>, this location would have
> subdirectories for the daemon scripts, log files, plugins etc.
>
> After reading a bunch of distutils documentation it appears that the
> only good way out of this is to have my packages install to the system
> wide site-packages directory. Then using the data_files command in
> setup.py have it copy across an initial skeleton copy of the server
> directory and finally install the startup scripts.
>
> Does this sound correct, any other suggestions?

I'd use instead a standard setup script, and install it with --prefix or  
--home. You may want to provide a setup.cfg file with some defaults.

> The distutils documentation doesn't cover this scenario and I've spent
> days searching for information so any assistance is greatly
> appreciated.

It is in the "Installing" part, not in "Distributing". After all, you (as  
the developer) should only provide "what" to install; but "where" those  
parts get actually installed is decided by soemone else when the app is  
installed ("someone else" might even be yourself)

-- 
Gabriel Genellina